I had the great pleasure of going to Aveqia in London to check out a demonstration of the new kitchen appliances. It’s a tiny venue specialising in cooking demonstrations for the corporate crowd. It’s only off of Blackfriars so I decided to walk from Waterloo. At one point during the morning I overheard that The Apprentice is doing an episode of some task or other at Aveqia very soon, so it’s clear that I’m hobnobbing with the aspiring-great and the aspiring-good. Of course, this is all in the name of research, right?
The morning starred Colin the rep who explained MC’ed and explained, and Roger the Michelin star chef who put the gear through its paces. We were treated to an incredibly special lunch cooked right before our eyes and I geeked right out on all the foody tech. Thanks, Claire for inviting me to go. It was fantastic!
Mick and the guys have built the chimney. We are STILL dithering on the fireplace design so they haven’t installed the cowl on the very top yet because we might not need it.
We’re also considering adding a line of tiles under each gable end to raise the roofline slightly as in the example of a different building alongside. Somewhere in one of the redesigns, the interior vaulted space came out a bit low so the beams in the oak frame now don’t show as much on the inside as we’d like. After all, we’ve spent a lot of time, effort and cash to get this oak frame right and we want to see it! In order to maintain the geometry and get the spacing right, the only way to go is up. There are a few options to do this but putting in a line of creasing tiles under the mortar on the gables might just be the way forward. Over to Dave to check, draw and sort, and we’ll decide which way to jump with it next week.
This weekend will be spent checking plans and choosing stuff, all the while keeping a keen eye on the budget. We have a knack of choosing the most expensive things going, and this is now coming into play a little to frequently. It’s definitely a case of champagne tastes with beer money. I’ve stopped telling suppliers that we live in Oxshott so they don’t make assumptions and get all footballers wives on me. But at least I wasn’t overly-enamoured with the £11k bathtub I saw in the in the window as the showpiece of the local posh bathroom shop in the village. Bonkers! So maybe it won’t be too bad on the final tally (yeah, and next week we’ll see pigs flying across the sky on the timelapse).
There is a debate about whether to keep the concrete floor planks and lower the level by reducing the screed, or by replacing the concrete with timber flooring which gives way more scope for changing relative heights. No one is excited about swinging the 1.5 ton planks anywhere near the wood, especially the crane driver. So clearly installation is another issue. Replacing the concrete planks with timber joists would fix the height and installation problems, but we had debated about this many moons ago in the planning stages and decided then that concrete was the way to go to give the building that really solid feel. Is it a compromise to change to timber or just an expedient solution? Or, is laying concrete planks on an oak frame a daft idea? We’ll have a good think over the weekend on which way to run with this: concrete or timber, but everyone is pulling together to work it out. The main things are to be flexible and listen to experts.
